Multi-decadal climate services help farmers assess and manage future risks

Climate services can support on-farm decisions, yet this potential is currently not fully realized. Here, using a participatory qualitative risk analysis framework, we introduced 24 Australian farmers to My Climate View, an Australian online, multi-decadal climate service, and asked them to identify, assess and discuss management of long-term risks in light of its projections. We found that multi-decadal projections can help farmers to better understand future climate risks, potentially reducing the psychological distance of climate change. The use of long-term climate projections, however, can be impeded by lack of confidence in data, so leveraging the expertise of trusted service providers may help boost farmers' confidence. Finally, though climate services providing multi-decadal projections can help farmers to identify future climate risks, they require interactive and recurring engagement to turn awareness into action. How climate services support on-farm management is not well understood. Here research shows that multi-decadal projections help farmers better identify future climate risks through reducing complexity and psychological distance, although this may be impeded by lack of confidence in data.